Former Transportation Secretary and potential 2028 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg appeared to distance himself from former President Joe Biden and rejected the idea of a "return to normal" during a Politico interview Tuesday.
"I'm trying to purge my vocabulary of anything with the prefix 're-' in it, anything with the word back in it," Buttigieg told columnist Jonathan Martin. "I don't think now is the time to be talking about 'Build Back Better.' Build better, yes. I don't even want to talk about back."
Martin pointed out that "Build Back Better" was Biden's 2020 presidential campaign slogan and asked if that meant he believed the party has changed in the last six years.
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"Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if that could have worked, it would have worked," Buttigieg said.
Overall, Buttigieg rejected the idea of pushing a "return to normal" message that was the staple of Biden's original campaign.
"But to me, the most important thing is — are we demonstrating a readiness to be focused on building what’s next or are we basically preaching some version of 'return to normal'? 'Return to normal,' in my view, won’t work."
"One way to say I’m not a 'return to normal' is to present the idea that looks furthest left, because that makes you, in a certain way, seem bold. I don’t think it’s the only way to be bold. And so, I think it is really important to not let it lapse into a 'left versus center' thing, when the most important question to me is, are we going to try to sell some version of a previous status quo?" Buttigieg said.
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The former Biden official also "couldn't say" the former president was a mentor to him, though he referred to him as a "good man" and a "good boss."
"I wasn't close enough to him to say that," Buttigieg said. "But I would say that he, again, after I competed against him, and he beat me and everybody else in that primary, he gave me a tremendous opportunity to do a lot of work that I cared about, that was meaningful, that I'm proud of ... I learned a lot from him, but I wouldn't say I was close enough to him that I claim that."
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden's office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Buttigieg's comments came after a University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll published last month showed him neck-and-neck with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in a potential 2028 match-up, though he has yet to fully commit to another presidential run.
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In light of this, Buttigieg has doubled down on far-left proposals such as eliminating the Electoral College or expanding the Supreme Court while downplaying concerns over the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its candidates.
"I think one of the reasons why you see people who run on a promise of shaking it up, whether it's a DSA candidate on the left or whether it’s someone like Donald Trump, is because people can tell that the system we have is not just showing its age — it's letting us down," Buttigieg said on "America Reports."
The comment drew criticism from Fox News political analyst Reince Priebus, who served as RNC chairman and White House chief of staff to President Donald Trump in his first term, warning that Democrats like Buttigieg are aligning with people on "the wrong side of normal."
"The opponent — the Democrats from where Pete Buttigieg is at — is aligning itself with people that are far outside the mainstream. They're on the wrong side of normal, and he didn't really address that when he was pressed," Priebus said on "America Reports." "And that's the big question for him."
